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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 22.45%
Worth A Look: 15.31%
Average: 25.51%
Pretty Bad: 31.63%
Total Crap: 5.1%
6 reviews, 62 user ratings
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| Kingdom of Heaven |
by Lybarger
"Looks Great: Less Fulfilling"
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The content of Sir Ridley Scott’s ("Gladiator") new film about the Crusades can be encapsulated in French-Swedish actress Eva Green’s performance. Dolled up as the princess of Jerusalem, she looks mesmerizing in her exotic period clothes. Her blue eyes are just captivating. It’s too bad her character doesn’t do or say anything interesting.In many ways, Scott wound up in an untenable situation with this project. If he sided too passionately with either the Christians or Muslims in their fight for the Holy Land, he’d be accused of exacerbating the current sectarian conflicts in the region. With all the stereotypes that have been perpetuated over the years, this would have neither been morally or artistically agreeable.
This neutrality ends up feeling dry in the end. From watching the film, it’s a bit hard to care who conquers. That’s not the only trouble that screenwriter William Monahan runs into with this tale.
He and director Scott focus on a French blacksmith named Balian (Orlando Bloom), who has little reason for staying in his hometown. His wife has just killed herself after a stillborn pregnancy. He’s also ostracized because he’s an illegitimate child.
His father (Liam Neeson), it turns out, happens to be a crusader named Godfrey and tries to recruit him to sail to the Holy Land. Once the two arrive, Balian discovers that the situation in Jerusalem isn’t as clear cut as he’s been told. Instead of a simple campaign to rid the Palestine of the infidels, the Kingdom of Jerusalem runs somewhat independently of the Vatican. Its King Baldwin (Edward Norton) has become a leper and is trying to keep an uneasy peace with Saracen leader Saladin (played with sly dignity by Ghassan Massoud).
The King tries to keep maintain tolerance and keep his bigoted brother-in-law Guy de Lusignan (Martin Csokas) from taking over when he dies. The monarch doesn’t have much choice in the matter because leprosy has disfigured and is slowly killing him.
Balian now has to figure out how to defend his new home and survive the court intrigue. His transformations seem a little abrupt. Back home, he killed a priest who insulted his late wife, and here he, despite limited training from his father, manages to rival Saladin with his strategy.
Bloom does his best to handle the logic gaps that Manohan leaves in his character but has little to work with. The same could be said for Eva Green. Does she have a burning forbidden desire for Balian or is she simply trying to enforce her brother the King’s wishes? Manohan drops hints but never seems to have thought the matter out. As a result, this core relationship winds up being a time killer until the big battle scenes.
Scott gets more results out of David Thewlis as a priest and Jeremy Irons as a war weary advisor to the King Baldwin. As the monarch, Norton has the most intriguing character of the bunch, but it’s bizarre to see a name actor hidden behind a metal mask throughout the performance.
Having started as a director of commercials, Scott is guaranteed to come up with some interesting visuals, but what he makes is a breathtaking adaptation of a dull, ideologically confused story.
Monahan seems to place a lot of 21st century ideas into the mouths of his characters. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. If you want history, there are several books and documentaries the viewer can consult, and great works of literature like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible often use past incidents to comment on modern troubles.That said, it’s hard to buy politically correct crusaders even if they appear in a visually interesting film like this one.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=12166&reviewer=382
originally posted: 05/09/05 10:40:22
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USA
06-May-2005 (R)
DVD: 23-May-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
05-May-2005
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